BLAIR WARNER
Thailand Columnist
Riding elephants, staying in a tribal village, meeting and living with Thai families, river rafting, playing with underprivileged and malnourished tribal kids and Thai language boot camp are just a few examples of what students in the spring semester in Thailand (SST) 2007 program have done in the three weeks that we have been here. And I have not even begun to rave about the food.
Pepperdine introduced the Thailand program to its list of possible spring study abroad programs last fall, and there could not have been a more exciting and adventurous program added to the list. Not only am I experiencing an unbelievably rich and exciting culture that is so opposite my own, but through this program I am being undeniably changed.
The SST program has nine students from Pepperdine. Other students come from various colleges on the West and East coasts, totaling 30 students. We live and study in Thailand’s second largest city and northern capital, Chiang Mai. I have been studying Thai language since I arrived in the beginning of January.
Thailand was quite an adjustment. Not just obvious things like the food and people are completely different, but also little things like wearing uniforms to class every day. I was a public school kid, so this is my first encounter with wearing the same thing to class every day. Everything, even the mundane, becomes an adventure.
The Thai people are incredible. Their hospitality is impossible to fully reciprocate. The smile is central to Thai personality— hence Thailand being dubbed “the land of smiles.”
Our group took an incredible trip to a mountainous tribal area of Thailand that opened our eyes to the vastness of the culture. Thailand has various tribal groups that are considered minorities are most do not have proper Thai citizenship since they are not ethnically “Thai.” This usually means an inability to attend schools and receive education, as well as the fact that the tribal groups live in the mountains and not in the Thai cities.
Our group journeyed to a village of the Lahu people, and groups of students paired off and became guests of various Lahu families for three nights. We did so much on this trip, from elephant-riding to 100-foot waterfalls, but particularly memorable for me was our visit one afternoon to a youth “hostel” of sorts in an even more remote village.
Most of the SST students thought the Lahu village was rural and quite remote, but getting to the youth hostel resembled Disneyland’s Indiana Jones ride with us bumping along in the backs of our red trucks, called “see-lahs.” The youth hostel is a place where tribal children live while they attend school. If they do not live at this hostel in this village where there is a school, then they would not receive any education at all. Their villages are so remote that they must live apart from their families for much of the year beginning around just five years of age.
The hostel runs on little money, and while we were there we learned that the kids live on three baht per day of food—there are 35 baht to a single U.S. dollar. It was heart breaking to see their absolute poverty and their joy and gratitude at us coming to visit was overwhelming.
Bringing candy, food, toys, games and crafts, we played with the kids for three hours. I had not played soccer with such talented little boys before, and I could not keep track of how many bracelets I helped make. More than anything though were their smiles.
Beaming, the kids just grinned and laughed as we all kicked balls, blew up balloons, painted faces and simply loved them for the short time we were there. Just seeing those 40 kids and how much more they deserved, it was overwhelming and completely unnerving. Poverty like that exists in so many places, even in our own country, and it is almost incomprehensible.
It would be arrogant to think that our group came waltzing in and simply changed the tribal kids’ lives in just a few short hours. They touched our hearts more than anything we could ever do for them.
Thailand is an incredible country with a rich and undeniably unique culture. Exploring and learning and becoming part of it in this program, I could never have imagined I would come to know my character and this extraordinary country so well.
02-01-2007